LINDEN — Gary Vierk was closing up early last Friday, citing a cell phone malfunction that needed to be attended to by someone far wiser about his device than he is.

But upon pulling up, he said he could spare a few minutes.

We spent the next hour in a time warp that is Vierk's everyday life, but to the outsider takes visitors at the Linden Depot Museum back as far as 109 years.

"My goal with this museum is to make it a top museum in the state in the next year," said Vierk, the museum's president. "I work feverishly at it nonstop."

And it shows.

The museum on Montgomery County's north end, on US 231, is easy to spot with the bright red Nickel Plate caboose out front, but the real treasures are inside the two buildings located where the Monon and Nickel Plate Railroads crossed, including two 1923 phones that are in working order and used to call from one building to the other.

Vierk, a 1956 Lafayette Jefferson and 1964 Purdue graduate and former Lafayette businessman, comes from a family heavily involved in the railroad industry. His grandfather started working at the railroad in 1906 and was an engineer for 54 years. His uncle was an engineer for 45.

He now spends his days at Indiana's last junction depot, which closed in the 1970s and transformed into a museum in 1993.

That nonstop work he spends sweating in the summer heat comes with perks, mainly from compliments or by seeing the eyes light up in children and adults alike when seeing America's past before their eyes, or from travelers coming from afar who just want to get a glimpse of a museum located in small town Indiana.

"Every weekend, we get somebody from some other country," Vierk said. "You'd be surprised."

To lure more locals, events often bring large turnouts.

The next one is Sept. 3 called Depot Under the Stars.

It's from 8 to 10 p.m. on a Sunday evening and advertised as the Linden Depot Museum as you've never seen it before.

There will be food. Lights will bring out the charm of the place as the sun fades.

The museum, which is open noon to 5 p.m. Friday, Saturday and Sunday and is $5 for adults and $1 for children, already has plenty of train memorabilia. But there's plenty more in stock. Vierk has several items hidden that in due time will make their way onto the main floor.

The major attraction, however, is a 16-x-10 model railroad with four operating trains, a monorail, blimp that race around mountain scenery, an animated circus and animated carnival.

Circus memorabilia surrounds the model railroad inside the second building, a short walk from the first.

"With the circus going away a little bit, we have a bit of the circus here to show people," Vierk said. "Indiana, at one times, was the biggest circus business in the United States."